15 Sep No Need For Six Monthly Check-ups? Says The Chief Dental Officer.

It seems all you need to do to make front page news is

a) say something controversial…

and

b) hold a top position in public office!

This week, England’s ‘top dentist’, the Chief Dental Officer for England, Sara Hurley, rather unhelpfully likened going to the dentist regularly to getting your car MOT’d. Interestingly, and unsurprisingly her comments didn’t go unnoticed. The press love to gorge on the buffet of regular dentist bashing and they seemingly fell over themselves clambering to this latest serving of verbal diarrhoea. And of course the press liberally interpreted her utterings and printed the big headline (roughly the title of this blog).

Luckily for the dental profession we don’t take such unhelpful, disingenuous drivel lightly and another ‘top dentist’ chipped in a somewhat mild and polite retort:

‘The CDO for England’s comparison of dental professionals with car mechanics was ill-judged and inappropriate’

…so said Mick Armstrong, Chair of the British Dental Association’s Principal Executive Committee.

You see, the thing is, my team and I here at Peelhouse Dental Care in Widnes, have worked very hard over the years to encourage our patients to attend every six months. Why? Simple… prevention. The two most common diseases the world over both happen to affect the teeth – decay and gum disease. Inconveniently, both generally cause no symptoms until at an advanced stage. But the best thing is that dental decay and gum disease is both preventable. And then there’s mouth cancer, something we check for every time.

Seriously, the overwhelming majority of our patients who attend regularly have exceptionally healthy mouths, have fewer problems and generally don’t suffer pain.

So I’ll be sticking to my ‘one size fits all’ health promotion and disease prevention philosophy for our patients here in Widnes and Runcorn …because it works.

Matt Lawler
Principal Dentist
Peelhouse Dental Care